


It's Okay

by fourgetregret (ryry_peaches)



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Catharsis, Coming Out, Drabble, Emotional Hurt, Emotionally Repressed, Episode: s13e10 Mac Finds His Pride, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Season/Series 13, Pride, Season/Series 13, Unresolved Emotional Tension, dennis is a bastard man, idk how to tag this!!!, kind of, mac finds his pride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 12:31:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16576535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryry_peaches/pseuds/fourgetregret
Summary: Dennis and Mac confront one another the evening of the parade.  Set directly (like, hours) after Mac Finds His Pride.





	It's Okay

**Author's Note:**

> I should be writing [Mac and Dennis Do a Fake-Dating Scheme](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16302299/chapters/38130302) (okay, let's be honest, I _should_ be doing homework) right now, but Mac Finds His Pride just won't leave me alone. It really spoke to me in a way I never in a million years would have expected from Sunny.

**purge**  
_verb_ \- to rid (someone) of an unwanted feeling, memory, or condition, typically giving a sense of cathartic release  
_synonyms: cleanse, purify, wash, absolve_

Dennis pulls a stool up to the bar, cracking open a beer. Looks at Mac for a long second — Mac can feel the force of a gaze on his face, doesn’t turn into it, lets Dennis look. Wonders what he’s looking for.

At length, Dennis says, “Heard you put on quite a show earlier.”

“Is that what you heard,” Mac replies, tone carefully neutral. His heart thuds in his chest, his stomach, his fingertips.

“Frank is pretty worked up about it. Said he _understands you now,_ whatever that means.”

Mac takes a deep breath, pushing it through his body. He wraps his hands around the half-empty, lukewarm beer in front of him, just to give them a purpose. “I don’t think it’s exactly a puzzle, Den.”

“Well then, what is it?” Dennis huffs a breath out; he’s sitting close enough that Mac feels it on his shoulder. “What does he understand?”

“Dennis —”

“Does he get why you screwed us over today? ‘Cos I sure as hell don’t.” There’s the crux; Dennis is upset, angry, cares that he’s been cheated out of the parade, that the bar is as empty as it ever is on a Sunday evening, not crawling with girls with buzz cuts and guys with handlebar mustaches, no new young hipsters in glittery suspenders ordering cocktails that Dennis and Dee would have to Google anyway.

Mac looks up, finally, turns to Dennis but doesn’t look him in the eyes, doesn’t take in much more than the set of his jaw, the way it tenses and twitches under his ear. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says softly. “Okay?”

“No.” Dennis sets down his bottle with just a hint of force. His torso twists, facing Mac with half his body now. “Listen, I — I know that your dad didn’t react so good. I’m sorry. But Mac, come on, Luther is a bastard — he doesn’t matter, and he’s always been a dick to you — why is this different? I mean, we all have shitty fathers, look at Frank —”

“Frank was actually there for me today.” Mac forces himself to look into Dennis’ eyes, cold and empty as ever. Like a swimming pool in the winter, that’s what they are. Blue and shining and closed up. “You weren’t.” He looks down again just as quickly.

Dennis’ adam’s apple bobs. “Because I was waiting for _you_ to be there for the rest of us.”

Mac closes his eyes. The day has already been so long, and the bar is so dark and practically empty, and he could get up and leave right now, leave Dennis and Dee to clean up for once. “That’s not the same thing.” He stays right where he is, though. Because this is his weak spot. Because he barely has the energy to stand, and he probably shouldn’t walk home at this exact moment.

“Why —”

“You know exactly why, Dennis.”

“I want to hear you say it. I want you to say it to me. Explain. Make _me_ understand.”

 _God damn it._ Mac thinks about how vulnerable he felt onstage. Half-naked and moving too fluidly. How even though he’d been intimidated by his father, it was Luther leaving that made him feel naked. “Being gay isn’t a performance, Dennis. It’s not a schtick to bring in customers. It’s not another scheme.”

Dennis manages to sound affronted, because of course he does. “I know that.”

Mac shakes his head and looks down his bottle’s neck. “No, you don’t, Dennis. You can’t.”

“Mac. Everyone knows that you’re born that way, and you don’t have to be a stereotype —”

“But I do!” Mac bites his lip and shudders, feeling dangerously teary. He cried in front of Frank and about a hundred hardened convicts today, but crying in front of Dennis is what would cross the line for some reason. He’s acutely aware of how fucked up that is; you should be able to cry in front of your best friend. “I do, because I have so much to prove, Dennis. And I have so much to live up to, and I can only guess at it most of the time. Do you think I don’t hear you guys when you talk? I’m your token gay guy, and I don’t know how to be proud of it. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

There’s a long pause, and Mac stares at a knot in the wood of the bar, a weird warped spot.

 _“Mac,”_ Dennis breathes, finally, “what the fuck are you talking about? You’re the same guy you’ve always been. All that’s changed is that you’ve owned up to it.”

“‘The same guy I’ve always been.’ Who is that?” Mac’s heart is still thundering, like this is a full-fledged physical fight and not a mildly tense discussion, on home turf, no less. “A scared little boy, still looking for his daddy to approve of him? Waiting for someone to tell him it’s okay? Being shameless about a guy I can never have, because it’s easier after twenty years of the same shit, pretending, than to open myself up to a world that I don’t know the first thing about…That’s the whole problem, Dennis. The guy I’ve always been doesn’t know how to be loved.”

The silence is much longer this time, and more still, somehow — he can hear his own breathing, and Dennis’, and the stragglers in the bar are all drinking alone. There’s not even a fan going.

Moments stretch into minutes, and Mac doesn’t move, and in his periphery, he can see Dennis also not moving, and it’s crushing, stifling, smothering — he could suffocate in this silence, could drown in it. It feels like confession, as scary and solitary, but without the comforting promise of absolution. Dennis is judging him, silently. A lesser god, an idol, waiting to hand down wrath. To cast Mac into the furnace, and Mac isn’t sure there are angels to walk him out of it. Today is the first time he’s acknowledged that. Twice in one day, now.

“Mac, I.” Dennis swallows audibly. “You know we all love you, man.”

“No, I don’t.” Mac grits his teeth and looks at Dennis again, looks through him. “You know, I carried something inside me for almost forty years, and then suddenly it wasn’t inside anymore. No matter how many people said they could see it on me, I could reassure myself with the knowledge that it was safe inside. I chose to pull it out and show it off. You know how to live life turned inside-out?” He feels his eyes fill. _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

“Mac, I —” Dennis raises a hand, somewhere between reassuring and alarmed.

Without planning to, Mac leaps up and runs for the bathroom. Maybe Dennis follows him — he doesn’t know, just rushes into the good bathroom and into the stall and tosses himself down, and as soon as his knees hit the tile the bile is risen in his throat and he’s vomiting, yellow-brown acid and alcohol burning his throat and souring his breath. For the second time today, he’s kneeling on a wet floor, crying harder than he has in so long, letting himself. He can feel the phantom of his dancing partner’s arms on him, hear the ghost of her voice: _it’s okay, it’s okay._

_It’s okay._

**Author's Note:**

> visit me at fourgetregret.tumblr.com if u wanna talk about sunny, pride, or my million other passions!


End file.
